Fully Funded Kickstarter Game Goes Belly Up

Haunts: The Manse Macabre wrapped up its Kickstarter drive just over three months ago on July 6th. The turn-based horror strategy game raised $28,739 – nearly $4,000 over its goal of $25,000.

The game was initially designed as a single-player and multi-player experience.

Then, in September, the developer announced that the single-player component would be scrapped.

“The single-player story was not fun and is now effectively gone, supplanted by very different-playing levels designed around versus play and which are fun to play over and over again,” Mob Rules Games founder Rick Dakan wrote at the time. “There will be versus the AI for these maps, but as with any kind of competitive game, they will be best played against a human.”

After September 11th, the Kickstarter page was quiet. No new updates from Dakan – a co-founder of Cryptic Studios and the original Lead Designer for City of Heroes according to his Kickstarter bio – for over a month.

Then, earlier today, Dakan informed backers that the game was effectively dead in the water – at least for now.

“As I’m sure many of you suspect, things haven’t been going well for Haunts and Mob Rules Games,” Dakan wrote. “I am still determined to get the game out, but I no longer have any way of knowing when and how that will happen.”

The problem, Dakan says, is that the studio no longer has any programmers.

“Our lead programmer, Jonathan, was always going to move on to something else after a year or so. We had hoped that he would be able to work on the game in his spare time, but now that he’s going back at Google, he has told us that his spare time will be very minimal and not enough to make progress on the game. Our second programmer, Josh, has quit the project entirely to take another job. He does not want to work on the game in his spare time.”

I wouldn't say it's gone "belly-up"; two programmers have left, which does indeed leave them in a bad predicament. Nevertheless, the main guy has stated that if things go from bad to worse and they are unable to deliver a product, he will reimburse pledges out of his own pocket.

Originally Posted by Drithius
I wouldn't say it's gone "belly-up"; two programmers have left, which does indeed leave them in a bad predicament. Nevertheless, the main guy has stated that if things go from bad to worse and they are unable to deliver a product, he will reimburse pledges out of his own pocket.

That's the title of the article not my own. Still it shows what can happen with kickstarters.

— RPGWatchSenior News Editor & Moderator

"I Am a Proud BioWare Fanboy, and Have Been One for Fifteen Years."Paypal Donation Link - If you like my work please donate.